The real story behind Donald Trump's Rise is the collapse of the Republican Party. Republicans have become venal and spineless. Paul Krugman writes:
The real news of the past few weeks isn’t that Trump is a wannabe Mussolini who can’t even make the trains run on time. It’s the absence of any meaningful pushback from Congressional Republicans. Indeed, not only are they acquiescing in Trump’s corruption, his incitements to violence, and his abuse of power, up to and including using the power of office to punish critics, they’re increasingly vocal in cheering him on.
Make no mistake: if Republicans hold both houses of Congress this November, Trump will go full authoritarian, abusing institutions like the I.R.S., trying to jail opponents and journalists on, er, trumped-up charges, and more — and he’ll do it with full support from his party.
If Trump is to fail, the Republican Party must fail with him:
The point is that once you’ve made excuses for and come to the aid of a bad leader, it gets ever harder to say no to the next outrage. Republicans who defended Trump over the Muslim ban, his early attacks on the press, the initial evidence of collusion with Russia, have in effect burned their bridges. It would be deeply embarrassing to admit that the elitist liberals they mocked were right when they were wrong; also, nobody who doesn’t support Trump will ever trust their judgment or patriotism again.
So the path of least resistance is always to sign on for the next stage of degradation. “No evidence of collusion” becomes “collusion is no big deal” becomes “collusion is awesome — and let’s send John Brennan to jail.”
The collapse of the party has been a long time coming:
There are some special aspects of the modern GOP that make it especially vulnerable to this kind of slide into leader-worship. The party has long been in the habit of rejecting awkward facts and attributing them to conspiracies: it’s not a big jump from claiming that climate change is a giant hoax perpetrated by the entire scientific community to asserting that Trump is the blameless target of a vast deep state conspiracy.
And modern Republican politicians are, with few exceptions, apparatchiks: they are creatures of a monolithic movement that doesn’t allow dissent but protects the loyal from risk. Even if they should happen to lose a race in their gerrymandered districts, as long as they toed the line they can count on “wing nut welfare” — commentator slots on Fox News, appointments at think tanks, and so on.
The rot runs deep and goes far beyond Trump. And, if the Republicans win in November, American democracy will be finished.
Image: The New York Times
12 comments:
The present complicity of the Republican Party in Trump's crimes and misdemeanors is nothing short of a betrayal of the American people, Owen. Yet I wonder if the Democrats, should they succeed in the id-term elections, will bring about a renewal of political morality or simply practise their own short-sighted version of political expediency. I was reading recently that the part is telling mid-term candidates to tailor their messages to their local situation. Sounds to me like they have little interest in engaging that "vision thing."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/us/politics/democrats-house-midterm-campaign.html
Thanks for the link, Lorne. The Democrats face a conundrum. They must represent their constituents. But they also need a plan to renew American democracy. Depending on their constituents, they could be trying to square the circle.
What is Trump but the cliff edge American democracy has been approaching for many years, perhaps the entirety of the neoliberal era? Liberal democracy was ground into a thin and unconvincing veneer by the ascendancy of the corporate state. What if the American people instead of Trump had elected someone less farcical but with the same core instincts? We're witnessing the demise of American democracy so starkly today because of Trump's lunacy. The shoals he has grounded on are those he made himself. Yet it is his buffoonery that distracts us from the realization that a lot of what we're seeing was baked into the American state well before Trump pondered his 2016 run.
Consider this. If Trump was removed, or fled for the safety of the hills, do we imagine America will magically reset to some past glorious democracy? Were Trump hung by his heels in some square like a latter day Mussolini would that uproot the oligarchy, reverse inequality, displace the "bought and paid for" Congress and the captured legislative and regulatory agencies?
Perhaps American democracy needs to go out with a bang rather than a whimper if only to pique public awareness to what they have lost, what has been taken from them. It's difficult for me to see what, short of some seismic event triggering a Jeffersonian revolt, would ever restore progressive democracy south of the border.
It's getting harder and harder, Mound, to accept Churchill's observatrion that, eventually, Americans will do the right thing.
@ Mound
Perhaps American democracy needs to go out with a bang rather than a whimper...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/19/rightwing-protest-seattle-march-against-alleged-leftwing-violence
Perhaps it will?
TB
Thanks for the link TB.
"The rightwing event was co-organised by the Washington state Three Percenters, and the Vancouver, Washington-based rightwing protest group Patriot Prayer. The Three Percenters are a paramilitary organisation which, according to monitoring group Political Research Associates, 'pledges armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership'. Members of other branches have been involved in confrontations with federal government agencies in Nevada, Oregon and Montana."
The United States is a country lost in its own myths. Unable to deal with the real world, it is ripe for implosion.
Dem's in Disarray, Campaigning on Trump!
FTFNYT. The US MSM's political reporting is a joke.
Democratic Party cantidates are/have been running on Constituent issues, like they should.
On the Dem Base sites, the key subjects are:
- get hard on White Collar Crime
- Tumbrels, ripping out the rot root, branch and stem, a full purge
- turning the "norms" in politics into hard law
- gutting ICE
- impeaching the Insane Clown POSus's judges
If Americans are paying attention, Jay, the Dems should retake the House. The Senate is another story. They won't get a 60-40 majority, but they could rebalance things. Then again, when 40% of the voters are brain dead, the Republic may simply die.
The Insane Clown POSus, only got 24.3% of the registered voters,
he's down to about 17% now.
While we bitch about our Senate, it's not as foul as the US Senate. The 70% of the US that actually makes money, is represented by half the Senators. The 30% who live in the empty welfare states, have the other half.
If the Democratic Party responds to it's base, and buy's a clue, the investigations and court cases will continue for years and hundreds of Russian moles, aka ReThugs, will go to jail.
If Mueller is allowed to finish, Jay, plenty of men -- and perhaps a couple of women -- will be indicted. It will be interesting to see how many will go to jail.
.. anologies abound, Owen .. and the 'reward' for turfing the pus sack president is Pence. What horror comes with that idiocy ? It will just be a different flavor or presentation of horse shite salad brought to the table.. and we now know a certain percentage of Americans are just fine with the taste & in fact will gobble it down & smack their lips.
Oh, the analogies ? Some are close at hand to my recollection. Rats in the granary & malnutritioned livestock is a fave - a doddering old farmer is no longer working the crops.. but is selling the topsoil.. and watching the zirconium channel on TV.. or taking a limo to the nearest casino. His family (the GOP) will soon sell the broken land at a loss, to developers who will build a 'super church' with parking for 10,000 of 'the faithful'. The granary of course & livestock is the American people, unaware of what is happening outside the granary or barn.. or believe the vaunted military with run the farm properly after Pence, the foreman is turfed as well.
A convoy or fleet led by a flagship that has become a 'plague ship' is another fave. The 'admiral' who has assumed 'command' did so via lottery or musical chairs. That's how bizarre the military and navy have become. What need of an admiral who cannot sail? The ship has promoted officers skilled in manipulations, thievery & they in turn have ranks of junior officers who can sail small watercraft, bass boats or paddle boats, or rearrange deck furniture. The folks down in steerage of all the ships? They don't know where they are, or where they are going.. but they are getting somewhere.. so that's OK. In fact they can hear the water sloshing by.. or is it underneath them.. and the hull is rotting? No it can't be, the admiral is a former successful commercial realtor, who surely is doing a great job up there in his cabin. Rumor has it the entire fleet is finally taking a clever shortcut, in fact sailing in very tight to shore along a vast coastline of lee shores to save time. How clever! Why didn't previous admirals do that? Instead insisting on some weird great circle routes and forcing the passengers and crew to eat lemons etc to prevent some fake disease called 'scurvy' by the all knowing current admiral.
I really like your nautical analogy, sal. Mad Captain Ahab is in command. One wonders how many Ishmaels will be left to tell the tale.
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